The cell proliferation antigen Ki-67 organises heterochromatin
- Institute for Integrative Biology of the Cell, Université Paris Sud, France
- Montpellier Institute of Molecular Genetics, France
- Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium
- University of Montpellier, France
- Spanish National Cancer Research Centre, Spain
- Mouse Clinical Institute, France
- SupAgro, France
Abstract
Antigen Ki-67 is a nuclear protein expressed in proliferating mammalian cells. It is widely used in cancer histopathology but its functions remain unclear. Here, we show that Ki-67 controls heterochromatin organisation. Altering Ki-67 expression levels did not significantly affect cell proliferation in vivo. Ki-67 mutant mice developed normally and cells lacking Ki-67 proliferated efficiently. Conversely, upregulation of Ki-67 expression in differentiated tissues did not prevent cell cycle arrest. Ki-67 interactors included proteins involved in nucleolar processes and chromatin regulators. Ki-67 depletion disrupted nucleologenesis but did not inhibit pre-rRNA processing. In contrast, it altered gene expression. Ki-67 silencing also had wide-ranging effects on chromatin organisation, disrupting heterochromatin compaction and long-range genomic interactions. Trimethylation of histone H3K9 and H4K20 was relocalised within the nucleus. Finally, overexpression of human or Xenopus Ki-67 induced ectopic heterochromatin formation. Altogether, our results suggest that Ki-67 expression in proliferating cells spatially organises heterochromatin, thereby controlling gene expression.
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Animal experimentation: All animal experiments were performed in accordance with international ethics standards and were subjected to approval by the Animal Experimentation Ethics Committee of Languedoc Roussillon and the Ministry for Higher Education and Research
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© 2016, Sobecki et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
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The cell proliferation antigen Ki-67 organises heterochromatin
eLife 5:e13722.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.13722
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